The Unknown University

by Roberto Bolaño, Laura Healy (Translator)

A deluxe edition of Bolaño's collected poetry

Perhaps surprisingly to some of his fiction fans, Roberto Bolaño touted poetry as the superior art form, able to approach an infinity in which "you become infinitely small without disappearing." When asked, "What makes you believe you're a better poet than a novelist?" Bolaño replied, "The poetry makes me blush less." The sum of his life's work in his preferred medium, The Unknown University is a showcase of Bolaño's gift for freely crossing genres, with poems written in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized. "Poetry," he believed, "is braver than anyone."

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Latin American, Spanish Literature, Latin American Literature, Ebooks, Literature

888 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

For most of his early adulthood, Bolaño was a vagabond, living at one time or another in Chile, Mexico, El Salvador, France and Spain. Bolaño moved to Europe in 1977, and finally made his way to Spain, where he married and settled on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona, working as a dishwasher, a campground custodian, bellhop and garbage collector — working during the day and writing at night.

He continued with his poetry, before shifting to fiction in his early forties. In an interview Bolaño stated that he made this decision because he felt responsible for the future financial well-being of his family, which he knew he could never secure from the earnings of a poet. This was confirmed by Jorge Herralde, who explained that Bolaño "abandoned his parsimonious beatnik existence" because the birth of his son in 1990 made him "decide that he was responsible for his family's future and that it would be easier to earn a living by writing fiction." However, he continued to think of himself primarily as a poet, and a collection of his verse, spanning 20 years, was published in 2000 under the title The Romantic Dogs.

Regarding his native country Chile, which he visited just once after going into voluntary exile, Bolaño had conflicted feelings. He was notorious in Chile for his fierce attacks on Isabel Allende and other members of the literary establishment.

In 2003, after a long period of declining health, Bolaño passed away. Bolaño was survived by his Spanish wife and their two children, whom he once called "my only motherland."

Although deep down he always felt like a poet, his reputation ultimately rests on his novels, novellas and short story collections. Although Bolaño espoused the lifestyle of a bohemian poet and literary enfant terrible for all his adult life, he only began to produce substantial works of fiction in the 1990s. He almost immediately became a highly regarded figure in Spanish and Latin American letters.

In rapid succession, he published a series of critically acclaimed works, the most important of which are the novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), the novella Nocturno de Chile (By Night In Chile), and, posthumously, the novel 2666. His two collections of short stories Llamadas telefónicas and Putas asesinas were awarded literary prizes.

In 2009 a number of unpublished novels were discovered among the author's papers.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Poetry is braver than anyone.’

When this volume first came out, I purchased a copy for myself and my good friend who would forget it in a cab a few days later on a trip to Las Vegas. Writing this now in Las Vegas, I’ve been reading these poems again in honor of the Vegas trip upon which they went astray. So far I have not, but we’ll see what happens after this margarita I just ordered. Something about bringing this for the weekend makes me think Roberto Bolaño would enjoy this anecdote. Bolaño has long been a favorite of mine and over the years I’ve returned again and again to this volume, the massive nearly-900pgs of The Unknown University, to sit with his mind and view Bolaño as he believed was most himself: his poetry. Though better known now for his novels he wrote near the end of his life, he considered himself first and foremost a poet and hoped that through his novels readers would come to his poems.

My Gift to You

My gift to you will be an abyss, she said,
but it will be so subtle you'll perceive it
only after many years have passed
and you are far from Mexico and me.
You'll find it when you need it most,
and that won't be
the happy ending,
but it will be an instant of emptiness and joy.
And maybe then you'll remember me,
if only just a little

This is a book I don’t think one can ever truly “finish,” as with the best of poetry each return visit resonates differently. A bilingual edition, translated by Laura Healy, this book collects writings from across Bolaño’s entire life and reads much like a diary of ideas tracing a course through his travels until he tragically passed at the age of 50. I’ve always had such a fondness for Bolaño and love the romantic image of him writing poetry late into the night during his time working as a night watchman at a park. I too have worked for parks and spent time scribbling bad poetry on the job, working grounds maintenance driving mowers and a garbage truck, so the garbage trucks and drivers that often appear in his works rather fondly mean a lot to me as well. But what I love best is the way he makes literature seem like the most vital part of life.

IT'S BETTER TO LEARN HOW TO READ THAN TO LEARN HOW TO DIE

Literacy is
Much better
And more important
Than the arduous study
Of Death
It will be with you all your life
And will even dole out
Happiness
And a certain misfortune or two
Learning to die
On the other hand
Learning to look
The Grim Reaper in the face
Will only serve you a short while
The brief moment
Of truth and disgust
And then never again

Epilogue and Moral: Dying is more important than reading, but it doesn't last as long. You could argue that living is dying every day. Or that reading is learning to die, obliquely. In conclusion, and as with so many things, the example continues to be Stevenson. Reading is learning to die, but also learning to be happy, to be brave.’

Also I love his wordless poem, Scion so much that it is forever on my skin:


Through these poems we see a beautiful portrait of the late writer take shape, with many self-portrait poems that scatter his timeline. He writes of ‘all of us, / brushing cheeks with death,’ in his signature style that always feels like a nightmare slowly uncurling in a surreal fog around us, always teetering on the precipice of disaster or, as he writes, his frame of life is always ‘Like in a horror film. / Know what I mean? / The ones we called psychological thrillers.’ He wrote that he used his words to examine ‘our models of fear.’

‘The poet doesn't wish to be greater / than others…Not wealth or fame... Simply waiting for someone or something in the ruins.’

We also see so much of his rebelliousness, which is rooted in the political but trandsends this over the course of his life. While he had to leave the Chile of his youth behind and frequently speaks against the Pinochet regime, he believed himself not an exile as he often said that poetry itself was his country of origin. As he writes in Romantic Dogs: ‘had lost a country but had won a dream. And if he had that dream, the rest did not matter.’ Still, he shows an affinity for the poets of his country and, despite his youthful rebellion against Octavio Paz, we see the love for and influence of Nicanor Parra in his works.

‘Get walking, then, Latin Americans
Get walking get walking
Start searching for the missing footsteps
Of the lost poets
In the motionless mud
Let’s lose ourselves in nothingness
There where the only things heard are
Parra’s footsteps
And the dreams of generation
Sacrificed beneath the wheel
Unchronicled.’

This volume is like an infinite university as much as it is the Unknown University and I have such a fondness for it. An absolute favorite writer, I love having all his poems in one place as well as the inclusion of a slightly different manuscript of Antwerp, included here under the title People Walking Away and is, according to Bolaño, ‘the only novel that doesn’t embarrass me.’ I return to this book again and again, and this latest revisit has been rather lovely. Certainly a beautiful book.

‘In a thousand years nothing will be left
of all that’s been written this century.
They’ll read loose sentences, traces
of lost women,
fragments of motionless children,
your slow green eyes
simply will not exist.
It will be like the Greek Anthology,
but even further away,
like a beach in winter
for another wonder, another indifference.’

[Ken]

Whew! How about some water? I don't usually tangle with 888-page books, but set your heart at rest, half of it is Spanish (even pages) and half English translation (increasingly odd pages). Plus, with the exception of the second section, which is all prose poems (so-called to everyone's confusion), Bolaño's poems tend to be like Jack Sprat -- none too fat.

His preoccupations, familiar to readers of his mega-novels, are here, too: hunchbacks, redheads, policemen, detectives, down-and-out poets from Central and South America, etc.. And it is fascinating that he turned to prose and novel-writing for the same reason all poets capable of doing so do so: money. But he hoped, too, that it would lead his readers back to his poems because, in his opinion, poetry is the literary cathedral.

Take that, those of you calling yourself "readers" while professing to "not like poetry so much." Don't think Bolaño isn't scouring your GR page for a shelf called "poetry," because he is (and it better be stocked and rated and lovingly reviewed, too).

Two lines that struck me by their quirkiness (and there are mucho quirkos here): "All lines are absolute loneliness" (speaking of lines in poetry) and "What poems lack is characters who lie in wait for the reader." After reading the latter, I checked my own poetry for characters lying in wait. "Jesus," they said. "Are you serious?" Then they jumped me. You know, to be clever and all.

Here's a sampling of his stuff:

Truth is I'm the one who's most afraid
even if it doesn't seem so In the dusk
of Barcelona One or two or three bottles
of dark beer The lovely Edna so far away
A lighthouse sweeps the city three times
This imaginary city One two three times
Edna said Indicating a mysterious hour
for sleep Without meeting again
Once and for all

And another:

The Persian blinds let in, scarcely, two beams of moonlight.
Like in an old Spanish film,
There's no one in the room,
The ashtrays are clean, the bed still made,
the wardrobe closed and full of coats, jackets, pants.
But there's no one.
Only two beams of moonlight.
Like in an old Spanish film.

And a final:

It's nighttime and I'm in the Zona Alta
in Barcelona and I've drunk
more than three cafés con leche
with some people I don't
know beneath a moon that sometimes
seems so miserable and other times
so alone and maybe it's neither
one nor the other and I
haven't drunk coffee but cognac and cognac
and cognac in a glass restaurant
in the Zona Alta and the people I
thought I was with really
don't exist or are faces floating
at the table next to mine
where I'm alone and drunk
spending my money on one edge
of the unknown university.

I don't know about you, but one thing I learned at the Unknown University was not to use star ratings for writing like this. I was just auditing because I didn't want to be graded as a critic.

Know this, though. I read the whole shibumi. All 444 odd pages.

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

at long last. the late roberto bolaño envisaged himself a poet above all else. despite being accomplished as both a novelist and short story writer, bolaño only ever took to fiction following the birth of his son lautaro - and only then to secure the financial well-being of his family. as a founding member of the infrarrealismo movement (or "visceral realists" as they appear in the savage detectives) in the mid-1970s, bolaño and his friends (dada/surrealism enthusiasts that they were) set about agitating the mexican poetic establishment, often disrupting readings and rebelling against traditional literary convention (with octavio paz as a favorite target). though the erstwhile infrarealists did not endure, their contrarian and iconoclastic ethos persisted onward throughout so much of bolaño's writing (see also distant star, 2666, and any number of short stories and poems). the vagabond poet, the obscure poet, the forgotten poet, the missing poet, the enigmatic poet, the criminal poet - all figure prominently within the realm of bolaño's fictional universe. beyond mere archetype or aspiration alone, the poet is an ideal of dissidence, the heretical devotee, or perhaps even the libidinous visionary. "poetry is braver than anyone." indeed.

my literary career

rejections from anagrama, grijalbo, planeta, certainly
also from alfaguara, mondadori. a no from muchnik,
seix barral, destino... all the publishers... all the readers
all the sales managers...
under the bridge, while it rains, a golden opportunity
to take a look at myself:
like a snake in the north pole, but writing.
writing poetry in the land of idiots.
writing with my son on my knee.
writing until night falls
with the thunder of a thousand demons.
the demons who will carry me to hell,
but writing.

the unknown university (la universidad desconocida) is a bilingual edition that collects nearly all of the poetry bolaño composed, spanning the years between 1978 and 1994. in 1993, ten years before he succumbed to liver failure (despite apparently being near the top of a transplant recipient list), bolaño "set about organizing and classifying his poetry." different versions and typewritten manuscripts were found in abundance amongst his archives after his passing (a more detailed explanation of the unknown university's origins may be found in an afterword of sorts, "brief history of the book," penned by carolina lópez, bolaño's widow - as well as in an accompanying and untitled series of notes from the author himself).

it's better to learn how to read than to learn how to die

literacy is
much better
and more important
than the arduous study
of death
she will be with you all your life
and will even dole out
happiness
and a certain misfortune or two
learning to die
on the other hand
learning to look
the grim reaper in the face
will only serve you a short while
the brief moment
of truth and disgust
and then never again

epilogue and moral: dying is more important than reading, but it doesn't last as long. you could argue that living is dying every day. or that reading is learning to die, obliquely. in conclusion, and as with so many things, the example continues to be stevenson. reading is learning to die, but also learning to be happy, to be brave.

divided into three parts, the unknown university collects more than three hundred of bolaño's poems and is further apportioned into 16 sections that correspond with his original handwritten notebooks (bolaño wrote all of his poetry by hand). for those familiar with bolaño's fiction, similar themes abound throughout his poetry, including sex, death, police, detectives, age, time, courage, crime, corruption, mexico, spain, the dilapidated and disregarded, forgotten and obscure writers, old friends, lighthouses, knives, and hunchbacks (to name but some of the more recurrent motifs). for those who have immersed themselves more fully within bolaño's oeuvre, it will be easy to recognize portions of the unknown university from his previously published works. nearly all of the poems contained within the romantic dogs, for example, are contained herein, but are situated within their original assemblages. two of the three pieces that comprise tres, "prose from autumn in gerona" and "the neochileans," also reappear in this collection. the 56 short chapters that make up antwerp (written while in his late 20's and considered by ignacio echevarría, bolaño's literary executor, as the "big bang" of his friend's fictional universe) are included under the title "people walking away" with but the slightest variations from the version that was originally published in 2002.

victoria ávalos and i
united in almost everything but mostly
in the pain in the silence of lost
lives which pain efficiently replaces
in the tides flowing toward our
loyal hearts toward our disloyal eyes
toward the wild parties we throw that no one
understands much like the two of us don't understand
the slaughters that surround us tenacious
in the division and multiplication of pain
as if the cities we inhabit were
an endless hospital ward

(victoria ávalos was the name of bolaño's mother)

throughout the unknown university, the reader will find reference to many a real life individual, be they arcane poets, fellow writers, family members, or former friends. mexican poet efraín huerta, horror/fantasy writer fritz leiber, former girlfriend edna lieberman (whom also appears in different incarnations within the savage detectives, antwerp, and 2666), argentine writer macedonio fernández, spanish novelist antoni garcía (a.g.) porta (with whom bolaño co-wrote his first published work, consejos de un discípulo de morrison a un fanático de joyce (advice from a morrison disciple to a joyce fanatic), and the author of the recently translated, soon-to-be-published (april 2013), and apparently remarkable 2006 novel, no world concerto), infrarealist poet bruno montané (and alleged inspiration for the savage detectives's felipe müller), spanish poet and nobel laureate juan ramón jiménez, mario santiago (infrarealist poet, friend, and the basis for ulises lima's character in the savage detectives), and bolaño's own son, lautaro, amongst others, all appear within these poems. characters from other works also show up, including gaspar heredia, poet/camp watchman from the skating rink, hunchbacks aplenty (antwerp), and, of course, the late poet/novelist himself.

roberto bolaño's devotion

toward the end of 1992 he was very sick
and had separated from his wife.
that was the goddamn truth:
he was alone and fucked
and he tended to think there was little time left.
but dreams, oblivious to sickness,
showed up every night
with a loyalty that came to surprise him.
dreams took him to that magical country
he and no one else called mexico city
and lisa and the voice of mario santiago
reading a poem
and so many other good things worthy
of the most ardent praise.
sick and alone, he would dream
and confront the days that passed inexorably
toward the end of another year.
and from it he gathered a bit of strength and courage.
mexico, the phosphorescent steps in the night,
the music playing on corners
where in the past whores would freeze
(in the icy heart of colonia guerrero)
and would dole him out the sustenance needed
to clench his teeth
and not cry in fear.

it seems unlikely that bolaño's poetry will ever garner the acclaim that his novels and short stories have so deservedly attracted. while much of the dark, foreboding, obsessive, and dimly-lit fringes that so characterize his fiction are ubiquitous in his poetry, the (perceived) challenges of poetry in general are likely too many for some (and perhaps, sadly, irredeemably so). like all great artists that work across more than a single medium, however, bolaño's fiction and poetry complement, augment, and interplay with one another. one cannot rightly claim to have read bolaño if they've spurned or dismissed what for the author himself was the truest and most natural form of his writing. had bolaño not fallen so gravely ill, perhaps he never would have turned to fiction at all - but instead remained one of the vagabond poets of esoterica that he wrote so admiringly about. it was, of course, his fiction that allowed him to ascend to the heights of literary eminence, but he likely would not have ever scaled even the least formidable of peaks if not for his poetry and poetic sensibilities as essential foundation.

resurrection

poetry slips into dreams
like a diver in a lake.
poetry, braver than anyone,
slips in and sinks
like lead
through a lake infinite as loch ness
or tragic and turbid as lake balatón.
consider it from below:
a diver
innocent
covered in feathers
of will.
poetry slips into dreams
like a diver who's dead
in the eyes of god

as epic and voluminous in its own way as the savage detectives and 2666, the unknown university is also as indispensable to understanding the bolaño mystique. were this collection the entirety of his literary output, it still would, in its own right, be a most notable achievement. the shared, recurrent imagery, the autobiographical infusions, and the permeable sense of inevitable dread ever-lingering just off-scene make the unknown university as characteristic and indicative a work as any of his others. with only a few unpublished or untranslated pieces remaining (the aforementioned work he coauthored with porta, a novella (una novelita lumpen), a posthumously-unearthed manuscript for a novel (diorama), and an apparent sixth part of 2666), it appears as though the reserve of bolaño's prodigious output has been quite nearly exhausted. it seems fitting then that the coda to a feverish decade of published translations (some nineteen books in total) should conclude with what bolaño himself may well have considered his most accomplished effort. the unknown university is deserving of as exalted a place in the bolaño canon as either of his two masterworks, and, with the others, should solidify his stature as a veritable titan of literature well into perpetuity.

muse

she was more beautiful than the sun
and i wasn't even 16 years old.
24 have passed
and she's still at my side.

sometimes i see her walking
over the mountains: she's the guardian angel
of our prayers.
she's the dream that recurs

with the promise and the whistle.
the whistle that call us
and loses us.
in her eyes i see the faces

of all my lost loves.
oh, muse, protect me, i say to her,
on the terrible days
of the ceaseless adventure.

never pull away from me.
take care of my steps and the steps
of my son lautaro.
let me feel your fingertips

once more over my spine,
pushing me, when everything is dark,
when everything is lost.
let me hear the whistle again.

i am your faithful lover
though sometimes dreaming
pulls me away from you.
you're also the queen of those dreams.

you have my friendship every day
and someday
your friendship will draw me out of
the wasteland of forgetfulness.

so even if you come
when i go
deep down we're
inseparable friends.

muse, wherever i
might go
you go.
i saw you in the hospitals

and in the line
of political prisoners
i saw you in the terrible eyes
of edna lieberman

and in the alleys
of the gunmen.
and you always protected me!
in defeat and in triumph.

in unhealthy relationships
and in cruelty,
you were always with me.
and even if the years pass

and the roberto bolaño of la alameda
and the librería de cristal
is transformed,
is paralyzed,

becomes older and stupider
you'll stay just as beautiful.
more than the sun
and the stars.

muse, wherever you
might go
i go.
i follow your radiant trail

across the long night.
not caring about years
of sickness.
not caring about the pain

or the effort i must make
to follow you.
because with you i can cross
the great desolate spaces

and i'll always find the door
leading back
to the chimera,
because you're with me,

muse,
more beautiful than the sun,
more beautiful
than the stars.

*translated from the spanish by laura healy (the romantic dogs & tres)

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry that might champion my shadow in days to come

when I’ll be just a name not the man who wandered

with empty pockets, worked in slaughterhouses

on the old and on the new continent.

I seek credibility not durability for the ballads

I composed in honor of very real girls.

After Novel Explosives I needed something to clear the air of cordite. These Beat-ish ruminations certainly cleansed, if only with the tears elicited. Heartfelt and sprawling, the verses ache of exile and loneliness. There are themed clusters of redheads and hunchbacks, crooked cops and faded postcards. I was expecting more books and reading to be chronicled. Despite my surprise this is a worthy testament.

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Bolano completists and Beat aficionados who want to read post-Beat poetry set in Barcelona by day and distant lands across the Atlantic by night. Gulped it down thanks to plentiful white space, only occasionally glancing at the Spanish on the left page. Skimmed "People Walking Away" since I'd read it when published solo as Antwerp -- of note: at the end Bolano namechecks Burroughs as its clear influence. So that's where the detectives come from. Also shout-outs to Ted Berrigan, Frank O'Hara, Nicanor Parra, Stefan Zweig. Loved the stray lines of writing advice. Every passing page accumulated like a dream I didn't want to break but only a few pieces jumped to five-star territory for me -- particularly the surreally sexy single-spaced story about visiting Mexico City bathhouses and the poems toward the end that directly address his son and his sickness. Like the best Beat stuff, Bolano's poetry makes you want to write -- and live in a way that makes sense when written and makes self-mythologizing seem to matter. Also interesting to see the early jewels of the big books to come, although they don't pop up everywhere at all. A great collection to plough through when a little sick toward the very end of the year, a time of limbo like in the bathhouses described by Bolano thusly: "The essence of those places seemed to be a limbo, a dead child's closed eyes." Which suggests the line in Amulet, I think, that mentions 2666: "a cemetery in the year 2666, a forgotten cemetery under the eyelid of a corpse or an unborn child, bathed in the dispassionate fluids of an eye that tried so hard to forget one particular thing that it ended up forgetting everything else." The limbo is embodied by the ultimately immortal yet nevertheless dying writer/father who once had a visa that let him stay in Spain for three months but not work. Here's good old-fashioned soul work done in lieu of work work, tracing oblique instruction handed down by a foreign city, all of it passed to his son as unique hometown heritage. Mutual protection -- his son protects the books by reading them and the books protect the son. Nice nice nice.

[Cosimo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Procura no dormir, Roberto, me digo

“En aquel tiempo yo tenìa 20 anos y estaba loco. Habia perdido un paìs però habia ganado un sueno. Y si tenìa ese sueno lo demàs no importaba. Ni trabajar, ni rezar, ni estudiar en la madrugada junto a los perros romanticos. Y el sueno vivìa en el vacìo de mi espiritu. Una habitaciòn de madera, en penumbras, en uno de los pulmones del tròpico. Y a veces me volvìa dentro de mi y visitaba el sueno: estatua eternizada en pensamientos liquidos, un gusàno blanco retorcìendose en el amor. Un amor desbocado. Un sueno dentro de otro sueno. Y la pesadilla me decìas: creceràs. Dejaràs atràs las imagenes del dolor y del labirinto y olvidaràs. Pero en aquel tiempo crecer hubiera sido un crimen. Estoy aquì, dije, con los perros romanticos y aquì me voy a quedar”.

Roberto Bolaño è una poeta unico e inesorabile, è la voce di una speranza che transita dissolvendosi in una materia epica e immediata, e come poeta romantico e metafisico a volte non distingue tra sogno e incubo, tra felicità e disperazione, tra l'amore e la solititudine, tra una parola e un pugnale, e di questa confusione, di questa non distinzione, di questo mancato discrimine noi gli siamo immensamente grati e per sempre riconoscenti, come verso un amico essenziale, un maestro di emozioni. Perché è in questa zona di non conoscibilità, in questi margini indecifrabili e oscuri e impossibili, in questa periferia interiore, che si incontra l'arte del suo dire, del suo raccontare, del suo comporre. Di un poeta che si espone alla vulnerabilità e alla vergogna. Qui mi sono trovato a frequentare queste poesie che coniugano una semplicità indecifrabile a una violenta visceralità, con l'ulteriore valore della lettura in spagnolo, dono linguistico di una espressività passionale e lunatica. Il titolo della raccolta, una biografia postuma, un testamento poetico dell'autore cileno, proviene dalla sua incalcolabile esperienza di lettore, è tratto da un racconto di fantascienza di Alfred Bester, Gli Uomini che assassinarono Maometto (1958), una variazione de La Macchina del Tempo di H.G. Wells. L'Università Sconosciuta è il luogo letterario e fantasmatico dove realtà e letteratura dialogano e etica e estetica si confrontano e si uniscono, con una finalità salvifica e terapeutica. Bisogna proteggere i poeti, o inseguirli come fanno i personaggi di Bolano, perché un mondo senza poesia è destinato alla distruzione, all'annientamento, alla degradazione ad un ambiente di prepotenza, di repressione e di morte. La poesia scrive se stessa fino a quando scende la notte, finché svanisca l'angoscia, fino all'alba e alla paura del mattino. La poesia è verità in forma di purezza, è lavoro gratuito, maturato come il vino, morbido come la neve; è memoria delle vedove e illusione del bambino, affilata come un coltello, silenziosa come una preghiera, accogliente come la chioma di un albero. Suonano le labbra di Bolano, cantano senza fermarsi né ammalarsi, ridono delle sconfitte i suoi versi, non si aspettano nulla dalla battaglia, si compromettono in un abisso e nel pericolo, nel rumore di una donna che ama, nell'inferno di un'ossessione perduta. Non rimane nulla dei nostri cuori, dice Bolano, e non ci sono immagini al di là del disfacimento, della disperazione, della furia febbrile. La lotta è inutile, la convinzione di una sconfitta si mostra inflessibile. Sta in una stanza a scrivere e senza uscire dalla porta conosce il mondo; quello che ha paura è lui, come un corpo dentro a un sacco colpito dal vento, e crede che niente di male possa accadergli, né il denaro, né la corruzione, né la noia, né il dolore, nulla passa attraverso la forza dell'amicizia, la compagnia degli sconosciuti. Tutto ciò che ancora non ha forma mi protegge, scrive, le colline ombrose, la gente che si allontana, i passaggi solitari, i frammenti che curano. Nella freddezza del reale il poeta si denuda, compie allusioni e inferenze, cerca un amore inusuale tra sesso e terrore, negli autunni condivisi, nei luoghi alieni e promiscui, nell'apparenza della solitudine. Scrive del mare, dello splendore e della luminosità, della ricerca pulsante, scrive la pietà necessaria a lasciare il labirinto del paradiso, a separare l'angoscia dallo spavento, ad arrendersi al fantasma della speranza. Dentro al testo poetico e alle brevi prose liriche ci sono i suoi detective smarriti e perduti, i personaggi maledetti, i suicidi dimenticati, i giovani che ballano, gli uomini duri e i nomadi e gli ultimi, le donne sudamericane, le regine dei bordelli, le promesse misteriose e i casi irresolubili, la pioggia specchio della melanconia, le frontiere vuote e improbabili, i cani romantici con la loro naturalezza. Il poeta come il detective vede oltre l'apparenza, nel vuoto e nell'orrore della città oscura e brutale, e lavora per evitare l'oblio e negoziare con la paura. Leggiamo i suoi versi e sentimenti antichi ci ricordano chi siamo, ma non troppo, ci spingono a fallire, ma senza colpa, a ingannare quanto basta a sopravvivere. C'è la luce dell'orfano e l'infinità delle cose, la follia degli spazi che abitiamo. Poi il poeta innamorato dimentica, devoto alle proprie impronte, avanza nel sentiero magnetico e irreale degli asini e dei giocatori e degli eroi, con passo incerto e necessario ritorna a casa, un luogo dove immergersi e risorgere e scrivere un finale felice, solo pelle e volontà. La poesia di Bolaño è una specie di caleidoscopio multiplo e deformato in direzione antimimetica, nella pluralità di realtà e tempo, il cui senso il lettore deve interpretare e discernere. Scrisse Bolaño nel 1976: “Il vero poeta è quello che lascia sempre se stesso alle spalle. Mai troppo tempo in uno stesso posto, come i guerriglieri, come gli ufo, come gli occhi bianchi degli ergastolani”. Da poeta è disceso con utopia e coraggio dentro ai romanzi, come un eroe della perdita, come l'occhio di un volto malinconico e incomprensibile che guarda sempre al presente, sconfitto dal mostro, come in un viaggio senza ritorno.

“Musa, adondequiera que tu vayas yo voy./ Sigo tu estela radiante a travès de la larga noche./ Sin importarme los anos o la enfermedad./ Sin importarme el dolor o el esfuerzo que he de hacer para seguirte./ Porque contigo puedo atravesar los grandes espacios desolados/, y siempre incontraré la puerta que me devuelva a la Quimera/, porque tu estas conmigo, Musa/, mas hermòsa que el sol, y mas hermòsa que las estrellas”.

http://www.edizionisur.it/sotto-il-vu...

[Come Musica · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’Università Sconosciuta è il testamento che Roberto Bolaño decide di lasciare a suo figlio di due anni Lautaro, quando scopre di essere malato e che non lo rivedrà più.

“Il caleidoscopio osservato. La passione è geometria. Rombi, cilindri, angoli che pulsano. La passione è geometria che cade nell’abisso, osservata dal fondo dell’abisso.
La sconosciuta osservata. Seni arrossati dall’acqua calda. Sono le sei di mattina e la voce fuori campo dell’uomo dice ancora che la accompagnerà al treno. Non è necessario, dice lei, il suo corpo che si muove di spalle alla macchina da presa. Con gesti precisi mette il pigiama nella valigia, la chiude, prende uno specchio, si guarda (lì lo spettatore le vedrà di sfuggita il volto: gli occhi molto aperti, terrorizzati), apre la valigia, mette via lo specchio, chiude la valigia, sfuma...”


“Questa speranza io non l’ho cercata. Questo edificio silenzioso dell’Università Sconosciuta.”


È una raccolta sullo smarrimento e anche sulla morte, sul Messico e sul Cile, sulla vita: in questa raccolta c’è tutto Bolaño con il suo genio, la sua cultura, la sua storia e con la sua profonda umanità.


“MEGLIO IMPARARE A LEGGERE
CHE IMPARARE A MORIRE

Molto meglio
E più importante
L’alfabetizzazione
Dell’arduo apprendistato
Della Morte
Quella ti accompagnerà tutta la vita
E ti darà addirittura
Gioie
E una o due disgrazie sicure
Imparare a morire
Invece
Imparare a guardare in faccia
La Pelona
Ti servirà solo per poco
Un breve istante
Di verità e schifo
E poi mai più
 
 
Epilogo e Morale: Morire è più importante di leggere, ma dura molto meno. Si potrebbe obiettare che vivere è morire ogni giorno. O che leggere è imparare a morire, in modo obliquo. Per concludere, come in tante altre cose, l’esempio continua a essere Stevenson. Leggere è imparare a morire, ma è anche imparare a essere felice, a essere coraggioso.”


È il gesto coraggioso di un padre che si consegna al figlio e che azzarda la propria resurrezione attraverso l’immortalità della sua opera


“RESURREZIONE

La poesia entra nel sogno
come un palombaro in un lago.
La poesia, la più coraggiosa di tutti,
entra e cade
a piombo
in un lago infinito come il Loch Ness
o torbido e infausto come il lago Balaton.
Contemplatela dal fondo:
un palombaro
innocente
avvolto nelle piume
della volontà.
La poesia entra nel sogno
come un palombaro morto
nell’occhio di Dio.”


E come Lautaro, anche noi siamo orfani di quel genio che è stato Roberto Bolaño


“RITRATTO DEL MAGGIO 1994

Mio figlio, il rappresentante dei bambini
su questa costa abbandonata dalla Musa,
oggi compie entusiasta e tenace quattro anni.
Gli autoritratti di Roberto Bolaño
volano spettrali come gabbiani nella notte
e gli cadono ai piedi come la rugiada cade
sulle foglie di un albero, il rappresentante
di tutto ciò che avremmo potuto essere,
forti e con radici in ciò che non cambia.
Ma non abbiamo avuto fede o l’abbiamo avuta in così tante cose
distrutte infine dalla realtà
(la Rivoluzione, per esempio, quella prateria
di bandiere rosse, campi feraci di pascolo)
che le nostre radici sono diventate come le nuvole
di Baudelaire. E ora sono gli autoritratti
di Lautaro Bolaño a danzare in una luce
accecante. Luce di sogno e meraviglia, luce
di detective erranti e di pugili il cui coraggio
ha illuminato le nostre solitudini. Quella che dice:
sono colei che non evita la solitudine, ma sono anche
la cantante della caverna, colei che trascina
padri e figli verso la bellezza.
E in questo confido.”

E noi a mani aperte apriamo il cuore a quel coraggio che ci lascia in eredità in questo suo testamento e chiudiamo gli occhi, immergendoci in questa sua opera (somma dei frammenti poetici dell’autore) perché anche la nostra vita possa essere un sogno meraviglioso che attraversa malattie e assenze...


“Un uomo che perde i capelli e i denti
ma non il coraggio
Come se il coraggio valesse qualcosa
Come se il coraggio dovesse restituirgli
quei lontani giorni in Messico
la giovinezza perduta e l’amore
(Bene, ha detto, mettiamo che accetto di perdere il Messico e la giovinezza
ma l’amore mai)
Un tipo con una strana predisposizione
a sopravvivere
Un poeta latinoamericano che al cader della notte
si butta sul suo pagliericcio e sogna
Un sogno meraviglioso
che attraversa paesi e anni
Un sogno meraviglioso
che attraversa malattie e assenze”


... Un sogno dentro un altro sogno...

“E a volte mi guardavo dentro
e visitavo il sogno: statua immortalata
in pensieri liquidi,
un verme bianco che si contorce
nell’amore.
Un amore sfrenato.
Un sogno dentro un altro sogno.
E l’incubo mi diceva: crescerai.
Ti lascerai alle spalle le immagini del dolore e del labirinto
e dimenticherai.
Ma a quel tempo crescere sarebbe stato un delitto.
Sono qui, dissi, con i cani romantici
e qui resterò.”

... Restando sotto la luce dell’amore, che guida quel passo che ci salva.

“IL SIGNOR WILTSHIRE

Tutto è finito, dice la voce del sogno, e ora sei il riflesso
di quel signor Wiltshire, commerciante di copra nei mari del Sud,
il bianco che sposò Uma, che ebbe molti figli,
quello che ammazzò Case e che non tornò più in
Inghilterra,
sei come lo zoppo che l’amore ha trasformato in eroe:
non tornerai mai nella tua terra (ma qual è la tua terra?),
non sarai mai un uomo saggio, be’, nemmeno un uomo
ragionevolmente intelligente, ma l’amore e il tuo sangue
ti hanno fatto fare un passo, incerto ma necessario, in mezzo
alla notte, e l’amore che ha guidato quel passo ti salva.”

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

And I remember that you loved me and hated me
And then I found myself alone in the Desert.

The acrobat says: this is the Desert.
The place where poems are made.
*
My gift to you will be an abyss, she said,
but it will be so subtle you’ll perceive it
only after many years have passed
and you are far from Mexico and me.
You’ll find it when you need it most,
and that won’t be
the happy ending,
but it will be an instant of emptiness and joy.
And maybe then you’ll remember me,
if only just a little
*
Silence hovers in the yards, leaving no pages with writing on them, that thing we’ll later call the work. Silence reads letters sitting on a balcony. Raspy sounding birds like throatiness, like women with deep voices. I no longer ask for all the loneliness of love or the tranquility of love or for the mirrors. Silence glimmers in the empty hallways, on the radios no one listens to anymore. Silence is love just as your throaty voice is a bird.
*
Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I’m at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses by Leopardi that Daniel
Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage.
*
Sunday morning. Today, same as last night and the day before, I called a friend from Barcelona. No one answered. I imagine for a few seconds the phone ringing in her house where there’s no one, same as yesterday and the day before, and then I open my eyes and stare at the coin slot and don’t see any coins.

[Hind · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had The Unknown University by my side for a months now and this journey has finally come to an end. I seem to be terrible at parting ways with books that spend so long a time with me that they just become intimate, and this one did. I've always looked up to Bolaño and I've always found his prose/poetry to have reached so close to greatness that they are almost synonymous. To simply put it, I'm very sad to have finished this and I think I'm going to be going back and forth into it just like I do with the works of writers/poets that I really love.
It would be unfair to try and pick out a favourite piece from this book because I truly loved so much of it and the highlighted bits are endless. However, Prose from Autumn in Gerona will have a special place in my heart, as well as the poems he wrote for his son (almost brought me to tears). It's a bitter-sweet feeling that I have for finishing it, but I'm glad that such work lived with me. Laura Healy did a wonderful job working on this, truly.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

As much as I find the commodification of Bolaño by western media conglomerates into a sort of cottage industry rather offensive, it is delightful to find the Bolaño universe still expanding. Just when I had reluctantly resigned myself to the fact that I would never again be able to read Bolaño's great novels, but would instead have to re-read them, a friend gave me this handsome book as a birthday present. Over 700 pages long, this bilingual volume of Bolaño's complete poems offers the fanatic a great resource and the dilettante another fun chapter in the posthumous life of one of the 20th century's greatest writers. In excellent English translation facing the Spanish originals, The Unknown University offers both an important research tool and mesmerizing bedside reading. It is organized according to the unpublished poetry manuscripts Bolaño prepared before his death and has the wonderful immediacy of poetry left as the poet liked, that rough, rude-hewn state of poetry that is as it was meant to be -- the poetry of the 1855 Leaves of Grass or the early and out-of-print books of WH Auden. Perhaps that is another collateral positive of the Bolaño industry: that the editors and publishers are making such a fortune off of the raw goods that they don't feel compelled to clean it up or water it down. This book reads like someone neatly typed up a handwritten manuscript and put it in a very nice hard cover. The poems aren't tooled and accomplished like so much of what we read nowadays. Even much of the avant garde these days write poems that feel like they have been polished with bowling towels and edited by committee (CA Conrad being one exception that comes to mind). The Unknown University is full of poems written by a Bolaño in desperation, either, as in the first sections, because of the poverty, anonymity and rejection he experienced in his first years as an expatriate in Catalunya or, as in its last third, because he has been diagnosed with terminal liver disease. They are written from a place of extraordinary privacy, and read like snapshots of Bolaño's mind -- they are truly the occasions of their being: a starving Bolaño savoring a cup of coffee, Bolaño spying on the girls taking polo lessons at the stables beside the campground where he lives, Bolaño reminiscing about the Mexico of his youth in Spanish hospitals at the end of his life. We are privy to the arrival of ideas and motifs that feature prominently in the novels: Northern Mexico, Mario Santiago (the real life Ulises Lima), detectives, horror movies, road trips.... Anyone who is as crazy about Bolaño as I am will love this book.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

The eternal Roberto Bolano's poetry is dazzling, racy, and just gorgeous. Bawdy, brimming with sadness, intellectual word play, and wit- sometimes with horrifying results, its one of the master's best.

[Cristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Mi carrera literaria
Rechazos de Anagrama, Grijalbo, Planeta, con toda seguridad también de Alfaguara, Mondadori. Un no de Muchnik, Seix Barral, Destino… Todas las editoriales…Todos los lectores…
Todos los gerentes de ventas…
Bajo el puente, mientras llueve, una oportunidad de oro
para verme a mí mismo:
Como una culebra en el Polo Norte, pero escribiendo.
Escribiendo poesía en el país de los imbéciles.
Escribiendo con mi hijo en las rodillas.
Escribiendo hasta que cae la noche
Con un estruendo de mil demonios.
Los demonios que han de llevarme al infierno,
Pero escribiendo”

Compré La Universidad Desconocida después de haber quedado fascinada por la exposición que sobre Roberto Bolaño organizó el Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona del 5 de marzo al 30 de junio de este año. Este poema inédito con el que Carolina López, la que fuera esposa de Bolaño y madre de sus hijos, introduce el libro representa para mí la esencia de Bolaño: pura pasión por escribir pese a todas las adversidades.

Si antes de acercarme a la exposición tan sólo conocía al Bolaño narrador de 2666, Estrella distante o el Tercer Reich, después de la exposición y de haber leído La Universidad Desconocida , Roberto Bolaño aparece ante mí como EL ESCRITOR (en mayúsculas, sí) y ello por dos razones principalmente.

La primera por su inmensa capacidad imaginativa y la forma tan magnífica que tiene de crear ambientes, dibujar personajes, y engancharte al relato sin que te des cuenta (aunque él se viera a sí mismo poeta considerando la prosa siempre como un género menor.) Pero ¿cómo llega a tal dominio del lenguaje? Dos factores son fundamentales: talento, sensibilidad, necesidad según Rilke, duende para Lorca, por una parte, y muchísimo trabajo, por otra.

Hay escritores que se centran en su mundo interior y desmenuzándolo llegan a comprender un poco más el entorno que les rodea y, otros, en cambio, como es el caso de Bolaño, a los que cualquier situación, por insulsa que parezca, les impulsa a escribir, de tal forma que todo puede servirles como objeto susceptible de ser convertido en obra de arte. Amo eso. Pero en la exposición también se pone de manifiesto que el arquetipo de artista romántico no existe puesto que junto a esa necesidad o impulso deben sumarse horas y horas de esfuerzo y trabajo. Así, en la exposición se podían observar los cuadernos de Bolaño con multitud de anotaciones cuidadosamente ordenadas, esquemas de los espacios que después aparecen en sus novelas, recortes de periódico referidos a sucesos que eventualmente podrían llegar a ser utilizados en alguno de sus libros. Me sorprendió, y mucho, un manuscrito que había expuesto en el que el escritor describía la pintura románica que representaba un nacimiento que aparecía en una caja de cerillas, que de acuerdo con la información que él mismo daba en el texto, había escrito mientras trabajaba de vigilante nocturno en un camping de la costa catalana. Me parece alucinante imaginar a Bolaño encendiéndose un cigarrillo en medio de la noche, y entreteniéndose describiendo la imagen de la caja de cerillas. Escribir por encima de todo, lo que sea, donde sea.

La segunda razón por la que lo admiro es por su coherencia vital, por su absoluta libertad y por su autenticidad. Para mí es Bolaño el ejemplo claro de lo que significa ser libre, pero no sólo mediante la palabra sino a través de la acción por varios motivos. El primero por vivir al máximo, pues puede deducirse que durante su juventud debió vivir un sinfín de experiencias en Chile y posteriormente en el D.F, que le marcaron profundamente y que después plasmará sobre el papel (principalmente en su novela Los detectives salvajes, que tengo pendiente); el segundo por priorizar durante toda su vida el hecho de escribir sin importarle lo más mínimo la opinión de les demás, por lo que se dedica a trabajar de cualquier cosa que le permita mantenerse sin más, circunstancia que por otra parte le recompensa con poder disfrutar de plena libertad para poder decir exactamente lo que quiere decir sin tener que someterse a los editores o a los gustos del mercado, lo que le permite, a su vez, ser muy crítico pero también tener que pagar el precio de sentirse solo y rechazado por no acceder a venderse; y el tercero, por la preocupación mostrada por el bienestar futuro de sus hijos cuando supo que estaba gravemente enfermo, escribiendo hasta el final su novela 2666 que finalmente no pudo acabar y dejando instrucciones concretas de cómo quería que se fuera publicando para asegurar que los beneficios económicos que se generaran cubrieran los gastos de los niños.

Yendo al contenido del poemario citaré como ejemplo de texto crítico el siguiente:

La Poesía Latinoamericana
Algo horrible, caballeros. La vacuidad y el espanto.
Paisaje de hormigas.
En el vacío. Pero en el fondo, útiles.
Leamos y contemplemos su diario discurrir:
Allí están los poetas de México y Argentina, de
Perú y Colombia, de Chile, Brasil
Y Bolivia
Empeñados en sus parcelas de poder
En pie de guerra (permanentemente), dispuestos a defender
Sus castillos de la acometida de la Nada
O de los jóvenes. Dispuestos a pactar, a ignorar,
A ejercer la violencia (verbal), a hacer desaparecer
De las antologías los elementos subversivos:
Algunos viejos cucú.
Una actividad que es fiel reflejo de nuestro continente.
Pobres y débiles, son nuestros poetas
Quienes mejor escenifican esa contingencia.
Pobres y débiles, ni europeos
Ni norteamericanos,
Patéticamente orgullosos y patéticamente cultos
(Aunque más nos valdría aprender matemáticas o mecánica,
¡Más nos valdría arar y sembrar! ¡Más nos valdría
Hacer de putos y putas!)
Pavos rellenos de pedos dispuestos a hablar de la muerte
En cualquier universidad, en cualquier barra de bar.
Así somos, vanidosos y lamentables,
Como América Latina, estrictamente jerárquicos, todos
En fila, todos con nuestras obras completas
Y un curso de inglés o francés
Haciendo cola en las puertas
De lo Desconocido:
Un Premio o una patada
En nuestro culo de cemento.
Epílogo: Y uno y dos y tres, mi corazón al revés, y cuatro y cinco y seis, está roto, ya lo veis, y siete y ocho y nueve, llueve, llueve, llueve…


Otro poema que me ha encantado ha sido el que sigue:

Lola Paniagua
Contra ti he intentado irme alejarme
La clausura requería velocidad
Pero finalmente eras tú la que abría la puerta.
Estabas en cualquier cosa que pudiera
Caminar llorar caerse al pozo
Y desde la claridad me preguntabas por mi salud
Estoy mal Lola casi no sueño.

También este:

Tu lejano corazón
No me siento seguro
En ninguna parte.
La aventura no termina.
Tus ojos brillan en todos los rincones.
No me siento seguro
En las palabras
Ni en el dinero
Ni en los espejos.
La aventura no termina jamás
Y tus ojos me buscan.
Y podría añadir aquí cualquier fragmento de Prosa del otoño en Gerona. Un ejemplo:
“La pasión es geometría. Rombos, cilindros, ángulos latidores. La pasión es geometría que cae al abismo, observada desde el fondo del abismo.”

Esto no es finalmente una reseña de la Universidad Desconocida, es mi tributo personal a Roberto Bolaño porque lo merece. Lo seguiré leyendo sin duda alguna.

[Carles Palau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lectura imprescindible para comprender mejor la obra de Bolaño y su interrelación. El exilio, la nostalgia, la escritura desde la precariedad y pobreza, los enamoramientos, amistades, influencias, el nacimiento de Lautaro (como él mismo dijo: mis hijos, mi única patria), su escritura consciente desde la enfermedad... Como temáticas que guían los pasos en su propia universidad desconocida, aquella que «evidentemente, no tiene sede fija, es una universidad móvil, pero común a todos.»

Aunque en gran medida no me parece que su poesía sea lo mejor que escribió, por momentos brilla y en ella se reconoce al Bolaño más lúcido. Recomiendo adentrarse en su poesía habiendo leído ya gran parte de sus novelas y disponiendo de cierto bagaje con el autor.

---

Ahora tu cuerpo es sacudido por
pesadillas. Ya no eres
el mismo: el que amó,
que se arriesgó.
Ya no eres el mismo, aunque
tal vez mañana todo se desvanezca
como un mal sueno y empieces
de nuevo. Tal vez
mañana empieces de nuevo.
Y el sudor, el frío,
los detectives erráticos,
sean como un sueño.
No te desanimes.
Ahora tiemblas, pero tal vez
mañana todo empiece de nuevo.

----

MEJOR APRENDER A LEER QUE APRENDER A MORIR

Epílogo y Moraleja: Morir es más importante que leer, pero dura mucho menos. Podríase objetar que vivir es morir cada día. O que leer es aprender a morir, oblicuamente. Para finalizar, y como en tantas cosas, el ejemplo sigue siendo Stevenson.

Leer es aprender a morir, pero también es aprender a ser feliz, a ser valiente.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am grateful for three masterpieces, all of which I had read earlier, 'Autumn in Gerona,' 'Mexican Manifesto' and 'The Neochileans.' This is probably the last Bolano work that one should read, after all the prose has been devoured and a journey for its poetic center is felt as necessary. The center is, of course, a void.

***

It hits you in the most ridiculous moment,
when you are asking A.V.
to leave the house or pay the money
and he looks back at you with eyes of graphite,
eyes murderous and leaden and perhaps long dead,
and you smile in exasperation
and you blink a long blink
and you find yourself in a huge field
of corn or wheat,
in a desolate field of corn or wheat,
where a silent UFO cleaves the sky,
a silent UFO, well-lit phallus of the extraordinary,
like the magnetic center of your dream's dream,
and ki-ki-ki does your heart,
and then you think of a Terrence Mallick movie
and a Jia Zhangke movie
and you know you have mixed the two in your head.

A.V. is still there, spittle on his beard,
exclaiming with great ferocity his intention
to never pay the money back,
and then he asks you if you think
he will ever make a movie,
and you say 'No' nonchalantly
because you know that Kerouac was wrong,
because great Roman candles that burn magnificently burn away,
and you almost pat your back for sticking with the world,
for having to wake up tomorrow in your own bed,
the injunction of waking up in your own bed,
and you want to say 'I'm an island, fuck you,'
but you only say 'No' again, nonchalantly.

A.V. goes away and you have other things to do,
although you register the things he has stolen,
wires and socks, cigarette lighters, a packet of muesli, et cetera,
and you laugh imagining his stupid eyes
and the stupid tragedy of his dreams,
and you think of the hollowness of all dreams,
the absent center of their miracles,
the center from where the sirens sing,
and tomorrow you will wake up in your bed
after having dreamed of innumerable division of doves
attacking the east, a fucking white blitzkrieg
and its storms of shit,
and under some shroud a general for those armies,
a general dutiful, honest, merciless,
and forever awake.

***

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

GENIUS.

[Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Advierto que todavía no soy un experto en poesía así que cuando mucho puedo hablar de lo más superficial y de lo que me hizo sentir este trabajo.

Este texto es un compendio de la poesía que Roberto Bolaño escribió en su errante vida, aparentemente la mayor cantidad de contenido la escribió estando en Cataluña. Según las notas los últimos poemas de este libro son de 1993 pero nunca fueron publicados en conjunto hasta 2007. Está compuesto de tres partes que tienen diferencias de estilo evidentes pero también temporal.

La primera parte es la más "poética" porque está compuesta de muchos poemas que tienen versos, aunque si esperas leer rimas, métricas no es el tipo de poeta que andas buscando. No es Miguel Hernández, tampoco Neruda, y como referencia, Bolaño admiraba a Parra. Pero repito, yo de poesía mucho no sé, prefiero dejar que los poemas hablen ellos mismos.

Dentro de mil años no quedará nada
de cuanto se ha escrito en este siglo
Leerán frases sueltas, huellas
de mujeres perdidas,
fragmentos de niños inmóviles,
tus ojos lentos y verdes simplemente no existirán.
Será como la Antología Griega,
aún más distante,
como una playa en invierno
para otro asombro y otra indiferencia

Muchas son reflexiones así como éstas. Otros son textos para amigos o que recuerdan situaciones personales.

Según Alain Resnais
hacia el final de su vida
Lovecraft fue vigilante nocturno
de un cine en Providence.

Pálido, sosteniendo un cigarrillo
entre los labios, con un metro
setenta y cinco de estatura
leo esto en la noche del camping
Estrella de Mar.

No enfermarse nunca Perder todas las batallas
Fumar con los ojos entornados y recitar bardos provenzales
en el solitario ir y venir de las fronteras
Esto puede ser la derrota pero también el mar
y las tabernas El signo que equilibra
tu inmadurez premeditada y las alegorías
Ser uno y débil y moverse

No es que por no rimar o por leerse de corrido los poemas no tengan ciertas estructuras.

La segunda parte consta de una serie de textos que son más prosa en la estructura pero siguen siendo poéticos en el sentido de que evocan emociones y esconden significados. O sea, prosa poética de una plana o menos. Casi todos aluden a situaciones imaginables o vividas tal vez en su vida en España o a su vida. Hay un poema que se llama El Mar y que recuerda a algo que pasa en Los Detectives Salvajes. Voy a reproducir uno no más.

Me quedé en silencio un momento y luego pregunté si él creía realmente que Roberto Bolaño ayudó al jorobadito sólo porque hacía años había estado enamorado de una mexicana y el jorobadito también era mexicano. Sí, dijo el guitearrista, parece mala literatura para enamorados , pero no encuentro otra explicación, quiero decir que en esa época Bolaño tampoco andaba muy sobrado de solidaridad o de desesperación, dos buenas razones para ayudar al mexicano. En cambio, de nostalgia...

Desaparece el verso pero aparece la cotidianeidad convertida en motivo "lírico". Hay emoción pero esa emoción está ligada a un momento vital, no a una idea o a un concepto. De repente el contexto es una calle o una persona. Recuerdos vagos de México, el tipo que vio en la esquina en Barcelona, las "muchachas desconocidas" que se encontraba en el camping Estrella de Mar apenas con dinero. Ahí creo que se ve de dónde surge la prosa de Bolaño que aparece en su narrativa. Junto con eso uno siente que está conversando o mejor dicho, escuchando anécdotas de un poeta. Cómo ve el día a día un poeta?

[...] Una muchacha que se ducha, su piel enrojecida por el agua caliente; sobre su pelo, como turbante, una toalla vieja, descolorida. De repente, mientras se pinta los labios delante del espejo me mira (estoy detrás) y dice que no hace falta que la acompañe a la estación [...]

Para acercarse a la mujer desconocida es necesario dejar de ser el hombre invisible. Ella dice, con todos sus actos, que el único misterio es la confidencia futura. ¿La boca del hombre invisible se acerca al espejo?
Sácame de este texto, querré decirle, muéstrame las cosas claras y sencillas, los gritos claros y sencillos, el miedo, la muerte, su instante Atlántida cenando en familia.

En esta parte pero más adelante aprovecha de tirar palos a la poesía latinoamericana y española. Y cierra con un texto que se llama Manifiesto Mexicano que es en realidad un relato en prosa de una chica que conoció en México.

La tercera parte es como una mezcla de las dos, es más legible pero vuelve (y con fuerza) el verso. Un verso bien libre eso sí. Recordando tanto momentos como conceptos y muchas mujeres.

Te regalaré un abismo, dijo ella,
pero de tan sutil manera que sólo lo percibirás
cuando hayan pasado muchos años
y estés lejos de México y de mí.
Cuando más lo necesites lo descubrirás,
y ése no será
el final feliz,
pero sí un instante de vacío y de felicidad
Y tal vez entonces te acuerdes de mi,
aunque no mucho.

La poesía entra en el sueño
como un buzo en un lago.
La poesía, más valiente que nadie,
entra y cae
a plomo
en un lago infinito como Loch Ness
o turbio e infausto como el lago Balatón.
Contempladla desde el fondo:
un buzo
inocente
envuelto en las plumas
de la voluntad.
La poesía entra en el sueño
como un buzo muerto
en el ojo de Dios.

Hay también un par de poemas dedicados a su hijo. Él parecía creer realmente que lo más importante que le podía legar era la literatura.

«Desesperado con la perspectiva de no volver a ver a mi hijo, ¿a quién encargar de su cuidado sino a los libros? Es así de simple: un poeta pide a los libros que amó y que le inquietaron, protección para su hijo en los años venideros.»

Para los lectores que están enamorados de la narrativa de Bolaño de verdad y quieren conocerlo más íntimamente creo que es obvio que tienen que leer sus poemas porque el narrador está ahí, uno lo puede sentir. Creo que se puede escarbar bastante ahí. Ese tipo que respiraba literatura y no se sentía realmente de ningún lugar (pero que soñaba con México). No sé qué tanto le puedan llegar a alguien que no haya leído la narrativa de Bolaño pero creo que al menos en el caso de la poesía es importante conocer al personaje detrás del poema y una vez que uno lo entiende puede meterse en los poemas. Para mi fue toda una experiencia leer tantos poemas de una misma persona juntos. Poemas tan personales también. Y cuando uno lee el éxito de Bolaño como novelista no se cree que él se veía a sí mismo como poeta pero ahí estaba. Era poeta.

[Lee Foust · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely collection of verse. One more version of Bolano’s mind—he claims the best version. While I disagree, and find his novels more compelling, overall, than his verse, he wrote many beautiful poems. All of the texts he wrote, in whatever form, are distinctly Bolano, making him something of a monolithic writer, a kind of single personality in many rhetorical forms. Rocky, yes, up and down, experimental, never really wholly consistent, he is a kind of pure writer, uncluttered by craft, I would say, always himself. Influenced only insomuch as it fed his uniqueness. His writing is like an ocean, ever-changing, always the same, just ocean.

P.S. Reading this, and digging its wonderful middle ground between the frequently stilted traditions of verse and the often maligned aplomb of street language and tellin’ it like it is, compelled me to prepare a retrospective of my own verse written in so many fragments over my 40 years of filling up notebooks with whatever literature I’ve managed to produce. Thus I thank the master for the inspiration and, as his writing always does, once again he made me feel like a member of the club. We are the savage detectives!

[Leonart Maruli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hampir seminggu menyelesaikan buku puisi tebal ini. Memang kelihatannya jumlah halamannya mencapai 800+ halaman tapi sebenarnya buku ini antologi dwibahasa dalam bahasa aslinya Spanyol dan terjemahannya dalam Bahasa Inggris.

Puisi-puisi Bolano kebanyakan sifatnya personal atau otobiografis. Banyak juga puisinya berlatar di Barcelona yang merupakan tempat tinggal Bolano saat eksil. Ada sebagian kecil yang lain berlatar di Meksiko. Ada juga puisi-puisi yang ditulis sebagai persembahan atau apresiasi terhadap penulis klasik. Bacalah!

[Quiver · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long work because it's bilingual: the first half is in Spanish, the second in English. I read the English.

Consists of three parts: poems, poetic prose, lost poems.

The first part was my favourite: full of images and ideas that struck a chord. I found myself highlighting lines in most poems.

"Trust me: it isn't love that's drawing near
but beauty with its stole of dead dawns."

"Abstract pianos
in silence's ambushes, my own muteness
that envelopes the writing."

Some lines could conjure up whole stories and recall long-forgotten emotions: I value that in poetry, especially in this kind of dreamy, magical-realism. I will be returning to this part to look for inspiration and imaginative leaps.

The second part: The poetic prose had its moments, but it was either too dense, too loose, or too filled with ellipses for me to appreciate its worth.

The third part: The lost poems didn't strike me as powerfully as those in the first part.

I was drawn to the book by the blurb where it says that 'Roberto Bolaño touted poetry as the superior art form, able to approach an infinity in which "you become infinitely small without disappearing."' Nicely put. His towering poetic images made me feel small indeed.

Five stars for the poems, two or three for the rest. Four in total.

[Arlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've read Bolano's oeuvre and you enjoyed both his prose and poetry than you are in for a treat. A collection of poetry and vignettes with familiar scenarios and characters that appear through out his novels and poems.
I'd suggest reading the "author's notes" and "brief history of the book" that appear at the end of the book early on in your reading just to give you a reference point of these writings.
Good stuff and something I may go back to sporadically for a reread.

[César Galicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro que comprueba tres cosas:

1.- Con sus altibajos, Bolaño lo supo hacer todo bien. Crónica, cuento, ensayo, reseña, poesía. Una mezcla de talento, disciplina, valentía, lectura como adicción y profundo respeto a la literatura.
2.- Bolaño era capaz de llevar sus obsesiones hasta las últimas consecuencias.
3.- A pesar de que su obra poética es la menos conocida, Bolaño, antes que cualquier otra cosa, es poeta.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Write red sex cross-cut by gray palm trees.
This eclipse is like your glasses falling into the abyss.
In the reading room of Hell.
With concrete men and subjective men
and those wanted by the law.

[Richard Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the finest, truest books of poetry I've ever read. Maybe Bolaño was right: poetry is braver than anything.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second time around reading this volume and I still find Bolano's novels superior to his poetry.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive collection of Bolaño’s poetry, some captivating, some not. At times I saw myself in his work, at others I saw Bolaño himself perhaps most clearly, but in the final analysis I’m not ready to agree with Bolaño himself that he’s best understood as a poet. Maybe that’s because I know him so much better in his prose. But at least now I have something that will be easy to revisit and digest.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

( 3.5 stars)
"Poetry that might champion my shadow in days to come

when I’ll be just a name not the man who wandered

with empty pockets, worked in slaughterhouses

on the old and on the new continent.

I seek credibility not durability for the ballads

I composed in honor of very real girls.

And mercy for my years before 26."

Bolaño's talent for story-telling is evident in his poetry, just like his poet's voice is evident in his fiction. Rough, fresh and full of colours, his poems are honest, often vulgar and always vibrant.
Word-drunk, far from refined, but still with their own rhythm, the thoughts of a 20-something old Bolaño are spilled in free-form 3-page long stories in some of the poems or in perfect two-line gems in others.
Young, hungry, egoistic.
Realist, relentless.
Too much too soon or too little too late - with Roberto you never quite know.
I prefer his fiction far more than his poetry. He had other opinions, but then again, he had turned stubbornness into a habit. You decide.

[Eric Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

You must read through its entirety to find the diamonds buried among the large amount of average poems. Perhaps reading each page allows the reader to truly appreciate the great poems and ideas sleeping deep within these pages. Fans of Bolano must read, but do not expect the wonder that exists in his other works.

[Pedro Areal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poesia de Bolaño, que se considerava poeta e não romancista. Magnifico.

Os poemas de Bolaño vão dando pistas sobre a vida nas margens da sociedade (guarda de campismo, colher fruta, viver frugalmente como artista aqui e ali, beber copos, corre riscos, etc) que constitui a tal universidade desconhecida onde se pode aprender algo com relevância real para a vida.

[Subashini]

At the moment I can safely say I prefer The Savage Detectives, which is the only book of his I've read so far. Although many of the poems are funny, frank, bawdy, and capacious in the manner of his prose in TSD, the poems don't grab me. Or I don't get them. There's no pull, no push, just tedium. I'm really not sure why but it feels like an effort to read at this point in time.

[Lerryns Hernández · Rating 5 out of 5]

La poesía de Bolaños es simplemente una aventura. El universo que crea el poeta es de los más apasionantes que he tenido la oportunidad de leer. Son constantes las referencias que hace sobre su paso por México como en España. La soledad y el erotismo se transforman en alucinaciones maravillosas. Un libro para tenerlo siempre allí, a la mano, para releerlo y saborearlo cientos de veces.